MIAMI – Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed yesterday to change the United States so it’s no longer an “arrogant power” that alienates the world.

“When I’m president, I’m going to send a message to the world that America is back – we’re not the arrogant power that we’ve been acting like for the last six years,” Sen. Clinton said during her first campaign stop in the Sunshine State.

“We want to be an admired country again in the world. There is a lot of work to be done,” Clinton said to applause from a predominantly black audience gathered for her town-hall-style chat in the Liberty City section of Miami.

Clinton blamed the Bush administration for squandering worldwide goodwill in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“It’s very sad to me,” she added. “We have to rebuild it because a lot of the problems we have, we can’t solve on our own. It can’t be solved just because we have the strongest military in the world.”

In a sharp shot at President Bush’s policy against bargaining with the terrorist-supporting nations Iran and Syria, she quipped: “I don’t think you get very far in life if you just point fingers at somebody and say, ‘We think you’re bad. We’re never going to talk to you.’ ”

“I don’t think that’s the way the world works,” she said, later adding, “you don’t make peace with your friends.”